Second That Emotion

Second Thoughts and Last Chances

Latikia

Edited by

The Old Fart

Chapter 5

Where to go…what to do? Who to believe in…who to trust?

I was calm as the ocean in the eye of a hurricane. So why were my hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly? Why did it feel as if I were waiting for a bullet to come plowing thru the back of my head? Why was I driving west towards the Ranch in the dark with heavy snow falling all around and no headlights? Why did the image of my sister, arm in arm with a stranger who wasn’t a stranger, keep popping into my mind? I didn’t want to relive that moment, but for some reason it kept returning to haunt me.

Here it comes again!

The electric tingling sensation began spreading thru the nerves of my muscles, beginning in my shoulders and radiating down my arms and chest and into my belly.

I pulled the car over to the side of the road, flung open the door and fell out, crawling blindly along the blacktop on my hands and knees as the bloody haze obscured my sight. Somehow I made it around to the back of the car and began puking my guts out into the churned up mix of snow and gravel.

You disgust me. You pathetic, whimpering, whining worm! “Oooh-oooh…she betrayed me! She hurt my feelings! I’m gonna cry like a fuckin’ little puss!” What a sad excuse for a man you turned out to be. No wonder she went looking for someone better.

I wiped the bile from my lips with the back of my hand and snarled out into the dark night beyond the road’s edge.

“Shut the hell up, cocksucker!” I spat.

…not me, laughing boy, not me.

“FUUUUUUUUUUKKKKKK!!!!” I bellowed, rising to my feet. The darkness before me lit up like afternoon in the Arizona desert. Trees, hedges, bushes, brambles…if it was alive before my eyes, it lit up and burned like a bonfire.

Ha-ha-ha-ha! Burn, baby, burn!!! Yeah! Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, smoke ‘em like you had ‘em…that’s the way to make people think you still got a pair, you limp-dick albino bitch!

What was wrong with me? One minute I couldn’t feel anything and the next it was like all the anger, rage and nastiness in the world was boiling up out of me.

Think, damnit!

You know what, there are times for thinking and there are times when you have to let go and feel. You’re afraid to just feel. Why do you suppose that is?

“I don’t know.”

Sure you do. I know why, which means you know why. The difference is that I’m willing to acknowledge it and you aren’t. I guess that makes me superior to you, huh?

“You want to think that, go right ahead. I never claimed to be superior to anyone.”

You know what pisses me off the most…this lame-ass sense of false humility you keep waving about like it was some kind of badge of honor.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I never claimed to be superior.” Jee-zeus! When the hell are you going to accept the fact that you are superior? You take this humble shit way too far…and it’s turned you into a joke. The only people who respect you anymore are the ones who’re afraid. You go out of your way to avoid using the abilities you have, abilities that define you, and make you who and what you are. Oh, you’ll use them to catch spies, traitors and so-called evil-doers, and you’ll use them to help total strangers, but not to keep your own family happy and in working order.

“It’s an invasion of their privacy!”

But doing it to people you don’t know is different, right? That makes it okay. Hypocrite! You’re one sorry sophist; you know that don’t’cha?

“I know. Hypocrite, sophist and hair-splitter. That sums me up pretty neatly.”

Well, you don’t have to be so fuckin’ proud of it. It’s nothing to be proud of, unless you imagine you’re some kind of victim. Victims have things happen to them and are helpless to do anything about it. You are not helpless. Sack-less sometimes, spineless at others, but never-ever helpless.

Not helpless. Never helpless. As long as I was alive there was something I could do.

The image of Isabeau and Alex Chorney walking together thru the parking garage popped into my head again followed quickly by the tingling.

“I’ve got to find a way to stop this.” I muttered to myself.

Why?

“Because I can’t control…”

Have you tried to control the feelings? Tried to control the process? No, you panicked and went looking for someplace else to put them so you wouldn’t have to deal with them. You are one chicken-shit sonofabitch ain’t’cha?

I was going from feeling nothing to being overwhelmed by feelings. Unpleasant feelings to be sure, but I’d dealt with worse in the past, hadn’t I?

Could anything be worse than feeling someone you love suffer and die?

Could anything feel worse? I’d survived that…how had I survived that?

You survived it by making it a part of you, taking it in and accepting it for what it was. You didn’t run from it or hide it. It made you one miserable fuckin’ asshole to be around for a few years, but you survived. You can do the same thing with this batch. If you’re willing to suffer. You are willing to suffer, aren’t you martyr-boy?

“I’m no martyr.”

Sure you are. You love the idea of carrying the weight and suffering of the entire world on your shoulders. You go out of your way to take responsibility for sins that aren’t even yours. It blends so well with that over-blown sense of humility. Hell, you’d rather nail yourself to a cross and hang there while the admiring crowd stands around ooohing and ahhhing your act of self sacrifice than stand up and do something about it. It’s funny really. You claim that you don’t believe in religion, but the faith you don’t believe in has turned you into an emotional eunuch. You’ve avoided your own feelings and emotions by sifting thru those of other people, using your job as an excuse and justification. You still don’t think you have a right to your own feelings as well as those of everyone around you. You have one great big honkin’ guilt complex going here Sparky, and if you don’t do something about it damn quick we’re all gonna be seriously fucked.

Could he be right? Had I been avoiding my own feelings? Did I actually believe I wasn’t entitled to emotions of my own?

There’s one easy way to find out. Let ‘em in and cope as best you can. Don’t try to suppress them, don’t hide from them and don’t get rid of them. They’re yours and you need to feel ‘em, even if they burn you like the fires of Hell.

The tingling increased, spreading downwards thru my body like the fires before me spread across the snow covered landscape. The emotions began boiling up and I was growing desperate to get rid of them. I shut my eyes tight and stood naked in the snow, letting the pain, anguish, rage, hostility, fear and jealousy fill me. And with them came fleeting flashes of memories; each image tightly bound to its very own emotion. They came and came and kept right on coming.

It was torture. Every nerve was coated with molten agony. Bitterness, despair, rejection and betrayal swam thru my blood, surrounding my heart and taking up residence in my belly.

I don’t know if Hell is fire or ice…for all I know it’s both and then some. But that night, at that moment, in an instant that lasted forever and just a few heartbeats at the same time, I burned and froze, raged and mourned, laughed and cried, lived and died and lived again.

Do you know what this is, dumbshit? What you’ve been so eager to get rid of? This is power! This is what makes you superior.

“You’re wrong about this making me superior.”

Am I? Everyone has feelings. But how many can take those feelings from another? How many can give feelings to another? How many can take a tiny sensation and make it huge? How many can take a normal human emotion and kill with it? How many can take that same emotion and heal with it? Please, tell me you don’t buy into that egalitarian crap about everyone being equal. ‘Cause we both know it just ain’t so. If everyone were exactly the same there’d be no place for the exceptional. A world of mediocrity. There’d be no genius, no great athletes, no heroes and no villains. And sure as god made little green apples, there wouldn’t be any you.

The pain increased to the point where tears were slipping out from under my tightly shut eyelids, rolling down along my nose, turning to steam and boiling away as they touched my cheeks. The hissing of tears and snowflakes when they came into contact with my inflamed skin was like the sound of butter on a hot skillet. The steam-like shrieking penetrated the thunderous sound of bubbling blood that was raging thru my veins, creating an appalling symphonic cacophony within my ears.

Why are you so dead set against being better than other people? What the hell is wrong with being smarter or faster or stronger?

“Arrogance is what’s wrong with it.” I grated between tightly clenched teeth.

Conceit, self-importance and over-confidence are what you really mean. Maybe throw in a smidgen of egotism. How about PRIDE?

“Yeah. All of the above.”

Pride in your abilities is not a bad thing. See, we’re right back to the humility issue. “Pride goeth before a fall.” Tell me, bright boy, what ever happened to the idea that it was a good thing to be well regarded for your skills and abilities and to take pride in your achievements? What’s wrong with working to gain the respect and admiration of others? I’ll tell you what happened…the religion of “humility”, that’s what happened. “The meek shall inherit the earth.” What a crock of shit! Humble, timid, submissive, mild, docile…spineless! The only earth they’re gonna inherit is the patch they’re buried in. You have this weird notion that good equals humble. Good don’t mean shit! Evil don’t mean shit! Except as you apply it or it applies to you. You know this, but you won’t accept it. And why? Because you want everyone to love you! Well I’ve got a news flash for you, fire-ball; it ain’t gonna happen. No matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, it just ain’t gonna happen. Time to grow up and face facts. There are people who will love you, who will like you, who won’t give a rat’s ass about you, and there are people who will hate your guts. The only way everyone’s gonna love you is if you make them. And you keep saying that you don’t want to do that. Well then, fine…don’t. But stop using it as an excuse to not use your abilities to their fullest extent and your utmost ability. Stop using it as an excuse to run away from the mess you’ve made of your life.

“I didn’t run away. I’m doing what I can to protect them from my lack of control.”

Yeah, right. Say it often enough and you might even start to believe it. They need you and you ran away. You couldn’t deal with feeling rejected and betrayed so you ran. Good thinking. What about your children? How are they gonna feel? Abandoned and rejected maybe? Responsible for whatever it is that’s happening? Little kids think the entire world revolves around them, so QED, right? Don’t you love any of them? Or has one rough spot in your path destroyed you that completely?

“One rough spot?” I snarled into the snowy night. “You really are an asshole --- asshole!”

I’m not Mother Teresa, I’m not Gandhi and I sure as hell ain’t Jesus or Buddha. And neither are you. So stop trying to be something you ain’t and concentrate on being better at what you are.

I stood quietly for several breaths, immersed in my private sea of troubles and wishing I had a damned sharp bodkin handy.

“Are you real, or am I just imagining you?”

I could ask you the same thing.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

It wasn’t much of a question. I didn’t think it deserved much of an answer…asshole!

I stood in the snow and cold for quite a while, letting the icy wind lash futilely at the flames that engulfed my body. In time I became accustomed to the over stuffed and swollen sensation of my personal torment, becoming resigned to the ache in my chest and at peace with the anger and disappointment that gnawed at my belly. The image of my sister and her boy-friend, along with dozens of unrelated but equally hurtful memories, ran thru my mind like a never-ending loop of movie film and while I still got mad and wanted to pulverize him slowly, the nausea that had previously accompanied that desire began to recede. And when that happened I remembered where and when I’d met Alex Chorney.

And I remembered everything else as well. Every damn feeling, sensation, thought and memory I’d suppressed since the second of August 1995 came fully into focus. It felt like my brain had swollen to three times its normal size.

I opened my eyes and looked around. It was still dark, and the snow was still falling. The thick white blanket had gradually put out the fires I’d started and I was only just able to make out the charred remains of trees and bushes in the dark. I flexed my arms, legs, shoulders and neck, wiped the moisture off my body and returned to the driver’s side door, removed as much of the snow that had blown inside and piled up in the driver’s seat as I could, climbed behind the wheel and shut the door. I flipped on the headlights and pulled back onto the road. At the first opportunity I got off the main road, turned around and headed for home.

It was somewhere around two in the morning when I finally got back. Snow was falling harder and faster than it had all night and the wind had increased to the point that it looked like the snow was falling sideways. Large drifts were forming around the cars on the drive and a white ramp was growing up against the front of the house.

I turned off the engine, snagged my duffle bag with one hand and opened the driver’s side door. The force of the wind shoved it back into my shoulder and I rapped my head against the ice cold window with a loud ‘crack’. I muscled the door open, holding it with my free hand, and got out as fast as I could. It slammed shut behind me as soon as I released my hold. I plowed almost blindly thru the knee deep snow to the front door, the duffle slung over my shoulder. Cold stiffened fingers were fumbling to insert the key into the dead-bolt when the door swung open. Standing in the doorway with a shotgun leveled at my chest was Lilly. Peggy was just behind and off to one side, a pistol held in both her small hands.

“Don’t shoot me before I have a chance to apologize.” I said softly.

Lilly lowered her weapon and stepped back, letting me inside. I closed the door as quietly as I could and locked it. Setting my bag down against the door I turned back around to face my girls.

Lilly had set the shotgun down, leaning it up against the wall and was tightening the belt of her robe.

“What are you doing here Ike? I thought you couldn’t control yourself.” she said, anger evident in every line of her face.

“I was half way to the ranch when I figured it all out. Lilly, Peggy…I am so sorry for putting you thru all of this. I’m sorry for dumping everything on you and running away. It was a cowardly, immature and irresponsible thing to do.”

Lilly stepped closer and put a hand against my bare chest.

“You aren’t going to be accidentally blowing up anything else?” she asked gently.

“No. I’ve got it under control now.”

“You’re sure?”

I nodded my head. “I’m sure.”

“Good.” Then she reached up and slapped me so hard across the face that I had to check to make sure I hadn’t lost any teeth.

“How dare you scare us like that, you sonofabitch? You ever do something like that again and I’ll…I’ll…”

I got down on one knee and she threw herself at me, pounding on my chest and arms as if I were a punching bag. The only thing I did in my own defense was to keep her fists away from my nose. I kinda liked it the way it was. After a couple of minutes she tired herself out and collapsed against me, sobbing and shaking. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight, rocking the both of us back and forth until she calmed down.

“It’ll never happen again, honey.” I whispered into her ear.

She pushed away, breaking my hold on her and glared at me. “It damn well better not.” she said grumpily, turned around, picked up the shotgun and walked away.

I watched her swaying hips until she disappeared around a corner. I took a deep breath and turned my head to where Peggy stood, pistol in hand, the barrel laying against her neck.

“You want to clobber me too, as long as I’m down here?” I asked her.

She shook her head, smiling slightly. “It wouldn’t be any fun at all if you just let me.”

I locked eyes with her and linked. “It was never about my loving you or Lilly less than I love my sister, never about putting her first.” I told her.

She watched me for a bit, cocked her head to one side and smiled. “No, it wasn’t…and it’s still there and just as warm as ever…but it’s buried beneath so much other crap. I thought you had this thing under control?”

“I do. I was trying to suppress those other feelings before; trying to convince myself that they didn’t exist. I think the part of me that amplifies emotions went into overdrive and started acting like a pre-amp, taking the tiniest little hints of feelings and jacking them up and up and up…until there was nothing for me to do if I wanted to avoid remembering and suffering, but unload. Once I stopped suppressing and accepted the emotions…well that’s what I think was going on. It still hurts. It hurts a lot.”

She nodded her head in agreement. “I know sweetie, I know.” She stepped up close and put her arms around my neck, pressing her small body against me. “Lilly and I are hurting too. And not just because of what happened with Izzy.”

I hugged her tightly to me. “I never for a moment thought you’d believe that I only loved you girls as a group. Because I don’t, you know; I love you individually, I always have. I guess I’ve done a lousy job of letting you know that, and I see now how leaving the way I did would only reinforce that belief. I will always love you Peggy, individually, not because you’re one of a set.”

Peggy squeezed me hard and kissed my cheek. “You just be sure to let Lilly know too.”

“I will. Peggy…I honestly thought I was protecting you all; doing the right thing, you know? It turns out that I was just trying to protect myself. I handle physical pain pretty well, but I’m a real wimp when it comes to the emotional kind.”

“Yeah you are. I’ve known that for a long time, and I’m pretty sure Lilly knows it too.” She tightened her arms around my neck. “We’ll forgive you…,” I couldn’t help but flinch when she said that, “…in time. But you’re gonna have to work for it.”

I sighed. “Forgiveness doesn’t come cheap, huh?”

“Nothing cheap is worth having.” She let go of me and backed up. “Now, if you’re going to insist on walking around nude all the time you’ll be the one answering the kid’s questions, not us.” She giggled and grinned at me. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things Tink and Rosie had to say about you.”

I stood up slowly. “Come on, they’re still babies. They can’t possibly…can they?”

“Little girls grow up fast these days. Puberty may still be a few years off, but they’re all very smart and very curious.”

“Heaven help me.” I moaned sadly. “I led a very sheltered life, especially regarding sex, for most of my life. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“Better start thinking about it…daddy. They’re going to ask and when they do I’m sending them right to you.” she laughed.

“You’re a cruel woman, Peggy. But I love you anyway.”

“I know. I’m going back upstairs now, so you stay right here for a bit and stare at my butt while I walk away. I know how much you enjoy that sort of thing. But then I want you to get your ass upstairs and into bed and let Lilly know that you love her.”

“You aren’t coming?”

She shook her head slightly. “I’m going to keep watch over Izzy. Something’s going on with her that I can’t quite put my finger on, but I’ve been keeping her asleep since you left. I’m not prepared to deal with hysterics from her right now. You’re really going to have your hands full when she wakes up in the morning.”

“That might not be the best idea…me dealing with her, I mean.”

“The two of you are going to have to work it out at some point. Lilly and I agree that the sooner you do, the better it’ll be for all of us.”

“Peggy…I know the guy she was with. I’ve met him before.”

Her eyes narrowed and the features of her pretty face took on a hard cast. “You know him?”

“I know who he is. We met once, very briefly in a CIA safe house. He was a field agent Dr. Wills brought in to test me. His name was ‘Alex’, or so Wills said, but they never told me more than that.”

“You don’t think this was just a casual affair, do you?”

“What do I know about casual affairs? As far as Alex goes, I only remembered having seen him once I stopped suppressing, so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to think things thru. It could be a coincidence I suppose.”

“You don’t believe that though, do you?”

“No. I don’t.”

Peggy looked at me, the hard edge of her expression softened and I could feel a slight mirroring of the sadness and hurt that lay within my own heart.

I took a half step forward, bent down and kissed my petite little darling softly on the lips.

“Make sure she’s asleep then come to bed.” I said firmly then turned her around and gave her a light slap across the bottom and watched with appreciation as she sauntered away, just a little extra wiggle in her walk.

Once she’d disappeared from view I reached back, snagged my duffle bag and carried it with me down the hall, around the corner and up the stairs to my room.

The door was closed and I couldn’t see any light at the bottom. I turned the knob and swung it open before me, fully expecting to have some object come flying towards my head.

Nothing happened. The room was dark. I closed the door, dropped the duffle at the foot of the bed, sat down on the mattress and put my face in my hands.

“I’m such an idiot.” I mumbled sadly into my palms.

“Yeah, you are.” a soft, warm, understanding voice answered back.

Lowering my hands, I turned my head to the left and saw Lilly sitting back against the headboard. The blankets and sheets had slipped down from around her shoulders, exposing soft skin, firm upturned breasts and a taught belly with tiny traces of stretch marks just above her hip bones. The room was unlit, but it didn’t matter to me. I could see her almost as clearly as I could have in daylight. Her shoulder length dark brown hair was uncombed and wild, strands flew in all directions; a couple of particularly insolent ones even dared to fall across the bridge of her nose, adding to her natural sexuality.

‘Damn, even after all these years she’s still a fox.’

“You have no idea how beautiful you are.” I said. “Do you know when I first started to fall in love with you?”

“When you kissed me in the basement of the hospital?”

“No. Before that. Captain Rossi was fixing the bandage over the holes in my side. I’d been tussling with Auggie and they’d started bleeding. Then this melodic voice asked me if they were bullet holes. Such a sweet, gentle, friendly voice. I looked down and into one of the loveliest faces I’ve ever seen. Big brown eyes brimming over with concern and compassion for a complete stranger, along with the brightest, warmest, most energizing smile I’ll ever know, even if I live till the sun goes cold. That’s when I started to fall in love with you. That’s when I remembered what love felt like. Before I met Peggy, before I went home to help my sister, before either of them there was you.”

“You actually remember that?” she asked faintly.

I smiled. “I remember all of it. You asked if I’d shot myself. I guess being on the Psych Ward it was a reasonable question. I made a bad joke about arming bears and you laughed anyway; a wonderfully sexy laugh that had every hair on my head standing on end. And then you said I was very pale and had nice muscles, pretty skin and looked like a statue.”

“Yes…a big, beautiful marble statue. God, I wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I was sad and miserable and lonely, but when I saw you I felt better. Life wasn’t so bad when you were near.”

I crawled up to where she sat and laid down along side her, putting my head on her chest just above those soft, sweet breasts and listened to her heart beating. One of her hands came to rest on my back while the other combed thru the tangled mop of hair on my head.

“Lilly, I love you dearly. I will always love you. The love I have for you is not dependent on how I feel about my sister or Peggy. You are not part of a matched set of women that I love. You’re one spectacularly wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, capable, passionate and sexy girl. I get chills watching you move. I get hard when I hear your voice. And it makes me feel ten feet tall any time I manage to make you smile. I wanted to be the best husband in the world for you, and instead I’ve made a real hash of things. I’m sorry Lilly. We deserved better.”

We lay together in silence for a couple of minutes, me listening to her heart while she danced her fingers thru my hair.

“I can’t believe you remember that day so exactly.”

“It’s not the day that I remember, it’s you.”

Silence returned for a long slow count of fifty heart beats.

“I’m sorry I hit you. You scared the hell out of me, running off like that, and I was really pissed.”

“I understand, Lilly. When I was very young I was convinced that the only people who loved me were my mother and my grandfather. Everyone else hated, teased, tormented or ignored me. I was an outcast in my own home. That kind of thinking doesn’t go away as you get older. It’s always there, waiting to pop out and screw with your mind. When I discovered that I could feel what other people were feeling all it did was confirm what I already thought. With one exception. My sister went from hating me to loving me, and I knew that her love was real. And then she left home and I was alone again, having to deal every day with people who thought I was some kind of freak…less than a real person. My first girl friend didn’t even care about me. Up until I met Carlie I’d almost convinced myself that I didn’t have any feelings of my own. When she died, I used our combined pain and suffering to bury those feelings so deep inside that I didn’t feel much of anything for nearly three years. My mother died and as I stood next to her coffin all I felt was tired and alone. In the Army I killed people I was linked with; I felt their pain, suffering, their death…but almost nothing of my own. I might as well have been dead. I wanted to die. I should have died, but I didn’t. I decided I wanted to live, but I still didn’t have any feelings of my own. When I met you I started having feelings of my own again. I started to care about other people, starting with the people on the ward, then Peggy, and then my sister, my father, Colonel DeBerg, Dr. Wills, David and Anya…and now our children. But I still know how most of the people I meet feel about me, and a part of me is still ready to suppress all my feelings if it begins to hurt too much. That’s what happened yesterday. I tried to shut down because it hurt so much. But I can’t do it the way I used to. My talent was grabbing those partially suppressed emotions and amplifying them. I was doing to myself what I do to other people…I just couldn’t control it and I was afraid I might hurt you girls or the kids without meaning to. So I ran.”

“The exploding trees?”

“Yeah. When the emotions got too strong for me to handle I put them in the trees and they blew up.”

“How did you get it to stop?” she asked.

“Well, I had just finished puking my guts out and starting a wildfire on the side of the road when I got into a fight with my darkness. You’ve met that part of me before. Nasty, bad tempered sonofabitch. He made me realize what I was doing and why I had to come back. When I stopped trying to bury the pain I was okay…in a manner of speaking.”

“And now you’re feeling it all?”

“Yeah, every last glorious sensation. I hate to admit this, but I discovered an unpleasant truth about myself tonight; I’m not the strong, composed, confident and self-assured man I thought I was…that I’ve been pretending to be. I’m as insecure and unsure of myself now as I was when I was sixteen. Maybe even worse. And I hate how vulnerable it makes me feel…how weak and helpless. I have power that other people can only dream of, but I don’t feel powerful; I feel pathetic.”

“You are so full of shit.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you could feel what I feel.”

The bedroom door opened and Peggy darted in, closed it quickly behind her, shucked her robe and hopped into bed with us. She crawled up behind me, slipped beneath the sheets and pressed against my back.

“Has he finished groveling yet?” she asked Lilly.

“I think so. He did a pretty good job of it too. But now he’s moved on to self-pity. He says he’s insecure and pathetic.”

“Ike? Insecure? There’s never been a time he didn’t know exactly what to do, or what to say. Our boy is perfect.” Peggy said, with just a hint of sarcasm.

“Give me a fuckin’ break will you? Women really don’t want a man who’s actually sensitive or emotional, do they? You all say you do, but it’s just a load of shit.”

“Have you been watching Oprah again?” Lilly laughed, causing her breasts to jiggle enticingly before my eyes.

“Fine. You don’t believe me? You want to know what I’m feeling…I’ll show you exactly what I’m feeling.”

I pushed off the mattress and sat back on my heels, facing the two of them, linked and let my emotions flow out to them.

Lilly’s shoulders began to shake as she put both hands up between her breasts. Peggy curled up next to her and started crying softly. The blood drained from their faces and they began to shake and whimper.

I sat there and watched them as the flow continued thru the links.

“Most people only experience a small number of emotions strongly at any given time. The emotions with the greatest intensity tend to mask everything else. Even Peggy, whose abilities are similar mine, can’t feel more than four or five at a time. I’m not like that. I feel everything all together, no matter how strong or how faint. With other people’s feelings I can pick and choose which ones I want, but not with mine. I can isolate one if I need to, but I can’t stop feeling the rest.”

“Oh, baby…how do you stand it? It hurts so much!” Lilly sobbed, tears dripping off her chin and onto her arms.

“It’s not unbearable as long as I don’t try to suppress them. But can you imagine what this would be like if it were magnified a thousand times? I had to get rid of it or I’d lose my mind.”

I cut the links, lay back down between my girls and pulled them close. We lay together for several minutes, me thinking dark thoughts while they cried themselves out. When both finally went silent I released the deep breath I’d been holding.

“Maybe I am feeling a little sorry for myself. Wouldn’t you, if you thought you were losing the only things that made your life worth living?”

“You haven’t lost us or the children.” Peggy reminded me, wiping her eyes and face with one small hand.

“Maybe we don’t tell you often enough how much you mean to us. I suppose we always assumed that you knew.” Lilly said, her voice rough from crying.

“I’ve tried very hard not to intrude on you that way. I didn’t want you to think I was spying or that I didn’t trust you.”

“I think we’ve all been taking a lot for granted. How did we get ourselves into this mess?” Lilly asked no one in particular.

“I suppose most of it is my fault.” I said absently. “I very badly wanted you guys to have your own lives, your own interests…free and clear of mine. I wanted you to stay with me because you wanted to, not because you felt obligated. But deep down I’ve always been afraid that by going that route I’d lose you. That you’d become strong enough, independent and self-reliant enough that you’d realize that you didn’t need me anymore…and then you’d be gone and I’d be alone again. Being alone wasn’t so bad when I didn’t care. You two have no idea what I was like between Carlie’s death and the Psych Ward, but you wouldn’t have liked that person. I guess I’m afraid that if I lose you I’ll become that guy again.”

Peggy crawled up over my shoulder and buried her face in my neck. I curled my arm around her waist and gave her bottom a pat.

“Why do you think that whatever Izzy did would cause you to lose us?” she asked.

I sighed and took a couple of short breaths, trying to keep from choking on the bile that was rising up in my throat.

“Has my sister ever told you about our first time in bed together?”

Lilly nodded her head, rolling over so that half of her naked torso lay pressed against my chest. “When you went back home to save her from that bastard Rick. Yeah…she was pretty graphic with her descriptions too.”

“Especially about the spanking.” Peggy giggled, squirming against me. I could feel her belly getting warmer.

“That wasn’t the first time. I went down on her when I was thirteen and she was seventeen.”

Peggy stiffened, and Lilly gasped slightly, but I got the oddest feeling that they were no where near as surprised as they were letting on. “For as far back as I could remember, before turning thirteen, Isabeau and my brother Ivan hated and despised me. They took every opportunity to tease, taunt, torment and generally make my life a living hell. Ivan shoved me around and beat me up until I got bigger than he was. Isabeau was more subtle. She humiliated me in private and in public, but it wasn’t physical, mostly…it was emotional. Can you imagine a little boy, desperate for the love and affection of his big brother and sister and never getting it? As I got older I realized that I wasn’t ever going to get it and I stopped hoping. I also stopped caring. Not long after I turned thirteen I stumbled onto linking and feeling other’s emotions, while on my first and only hunting trip. I linked with a deer and used the link to put a bullet in his heart. I felt him die and I just freaked. When we got back home I went to my room and hid in the closet for a couple of days.”

“You were suppressing your feelings even then, weren’t you?” Lilly asked.

“Oh yeah. And I was terrified that I might link with a person and I really didn’t want that to happen. On the third day I came out and was sleeping in my own bed, which is when Isabeau decided to come looking for me. I could tell you, word for word, what she said to me and what I said to her. I won’t bore you with those details. The short version is she said she was worried about me, I didn’t believe her and she knew I didn’t and why. She started crying, telling me what a bad sister and human being she was; I linked with her without meaning to and felt what she was feeling. Her pain, remorse and regret were real enough, but I also felt love in her…love for me. Anyway, that was the first time I’d ever linked with a human and I wasn’t ready for the intensity of her feelings. How could I have been ready for that? Her pain became my pain. It was so real to me, so powerful…it was fuckin’ agony. It hurt so much I could barely speak, but while I tried to claw my heart out of my chest to stop it from breaking, I told her I believed her and that I forgave her. The pain stopped. And for the first time in our lives my big sister held me in her arms and told me she loved me, and I knew she meant it. But along with the love was another emotion that I didn’t recognize. I was exhausted having her emotions running amok in me, so I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning she was in my bed wearing a nightgown and laying against me, just like Lilly is now. I was confused, ignorant and horny…typical teen aged boy stuff. I woke her up and asked why she was in my bed. She said she was making sure I got a good night’s sleep and didn’t go back into hiding. Then she grabbed my dick and I linked to her without thinking. She was even hornier than I was and that emotion I hadn’t understood from the day before was really strong that morning.”

“Lust, right?” Peggy asked.

“Yeah. It was burning her up and I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how. I was completely clueless. I told her she’d have to tell me what to do. Between her instructions and my reading her emotions thru the link I got her off…and in the process my nervous system got overloaded by the force of her orgasms and I blacked out.”

“Damn!” Peggy hissed, grinding her belly hard against my hip. I gave her butt a little smack.

“No dry humpin’ Daddy during story time, half pint.” I said with mock sternness.

“Give me another few seconds and it won’t be dry.” she laughed.

“Izzy must have known that what the two of you were doing was forbidden.” Lilly said, tracing a finger around my left nipple.

“She knew. I didn’t. I still can’t believe how naive and ignorant I was, but she knew. Afterwards she went downstairs and made us breakfast while I cleaned up my room. When I went down to join her I felt something was bothering her so I linked with her and felt her fear…of me. She was afraid, but there was something else…a need. I guessed and got it right. I gave her a hug and told her I loved her, and then she was fine. She’d been afraid I would reject her. Later she taught me how to cut the link and then took me to the mall so I could practice. I linked with way too many people at one time and overloaded. She got me home safe. And that’s when I learned about the birds and the bees. She made a joke about telling a security guard I’d passed out because of syphilis and I asked what syphilis was. No one had ever told me anything about sex. I’d read books, mostly biology with the odd noir gum-shoe novel thrown in to confuse things, but other than that I didn’t know a thing. So she explained sex to me. Not reproduction, SEX. And being a dumb kid who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, I asked her if she’d ever had sex before. She clammed up on me. I decided to let it go and went to take a nap. Before I could fall asleep she came up to my room and told me about her first time and the boy who she’d loved, and how he went around bragging about it to all his friends, humiliating her. She caught the little rat and ended up beating the shit out of him. And later, when he couldn’t be her target, she took it out on me. I asked her why she hadn’t wanted to tell me that she’d had sex before.

‘Ike, sometimes when people have sex, or make love, or even just do what we did, well sometimes one of them starts to feel possessive of the other. They start to think they have a personal claim on that person. Understand what I’m saying?’

‘I think so. You thought I’d be jealous that you had sex with someone other than me.’

‘Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.’

Peggy shivered and pressed harder against me. “Is that really how you sounded when you were thirteen?”

“I suppose. Anyhow, I told her that I loved her anyway…and that I always would.”

“Did you tell her you were jealous?” Lilly asked.

“What do you think?”

“No, I don’t think you did.”

“Maybe I should have said something; hell, I probably should have said something, but I didn’t.”

“Could that be where you first got the idea that you shouldn’t want to feel possessive of another person?” Peggy asked, her lips close to my neck.

“It’s possible. I’m not sure, to be honest. That was the only time we had sex of any kind until I got back from Saudi. What I am sure of is that she left for college, after a year of struggling with what she knew was incestuous lust, hooked up with Ricky and used him as a sub for me. She lived for years with guilt, fear and regret, thinking she’d seduced and perverted me. She pulled away from Mom and me and the rest of the family. When that happened I couldn’t help but feel rejected and abandoned; that she didn’t love me any more.”

“And now it’s happening all over again.” Lilly said sadly.

“Seems like, doesn’t it? You can only be betrayed by those you trust. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

Both Lilly and Peggy stiffened slightly then pressed themselves harder against me.

“I understand how all of this has made you insecure about your relationship with Izzy. But it doesn’t have anything to do with how we feel about you.” Peggy said.

“Doesn’t it? I’m in love with three women who have no legally recognizable obligation to me, no responsibility towards me other than the whim of the moment. I’m the father of four beautiful children, but I have no realistic claim on them. I’m not even named as the father on their birth certificates. They’re your children in the eyes of the law, not mine. Everything that matters most to me is in the hands of other people. I have nothing. I’m in control of nothing. I told you once that if any of you would be happier without me I wouldn’t make you stay, and I meant it. But think about what kind of position that puts me in. You three have all the power in our relationship. You always have. All I could do was agree to be the very junior partner…or walk away. I agreed to put up with damn near anything just for the chance to have what I wanted most; love and a family. How fuckin’ naïve can one person be, huh?”

“Ike…” Peggy began, raising herself up, placing one small hand in the center of my chest and looking into my eyes.

“Hush, darlin’ and go to sleep. Just let it be.”

“Ike, we need to…” Lilly tried to interject, lifting up on one arm. I turned my head and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“No, you don’t. Let it be.” I tightened my arms around them. “Go to sleep, both of you. I’m all talked out and I just want to forget for a few hours.”

They sagged back down and pressed close. I could feel their bodies shaking and hot tears fell on my skin like tiny rivers of fire.

Eventually I closed my eyes and let sleep take me.